Good morning!
How is your week going? Today is the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. It seems like a joke that with all the progress accumulated by humanity in the last 50 years we still have levels of misery in Spain that are embarrassing. But the reality is that huge sums of capital are moved, billions of euros pass through our country in search of the new grail of investment.
In this sense, I recommend that you read the article by businesswoman María Álvarez about the next crisis that will come. Álvarez describes how since 2000, technology has become the investment center of the financial world, without productivity growing, in search of the last shot that will allow this system to move forward in its most unbridled version of greed.
Among those expected hits is Artificial Intelligence (AI). An example: OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, has closed the largest round of venture capital financing in history with 6.6 billion. We are talking about a company that was created without profit but where the push of capital has removed most of its founders.
Álvarez recalls in his article how an investment bank like Goldman Sachs says that AI will not provide returns for a trillion-dollar investment, which is what is expected, although the consequences are yet to be defined and they can be dangerous. For this reason, US AI companies, the most powerful, are starting to leave the EU without new programs with the threat that if it does not relax its regulations it will see “how the rest of the world builds on technologies to which Europeans will not have access.”
And this context is where Spain can fully enter as a service company. Among other things, because AI needs a much larger data infrastructure than what exists now to function and there data centers become the new panacea for the economy. Spain is consolidating itself as an “emerging” market for data centers and receiving multimillion-dollar investments beyond technology companies.
From the investment fund Blackstone, the largest owner of rental homes in Spain, which has announced an investment of 7,500 million in this sector in Aragón, where it is already planned that Amazon targets 15.7 billion to expand its network of data centers or the 6 billion raised by Microsoft.
There is a new fever of billions looking for how to become the leaders of the next digital breakthrough. According to Linklaters40% of the investments of the 50 main real estate funds globally are already allocated to the construction of data centers.
In this tidal wave, a group of Spanish companies does not want to be left behind, so Iberdrola or companies like El Corte Inglés or ACS are looking for their place in the new manna. Here we tell you about the new investment fever for data centers in Spain.
It is true that digital infrastructures are necessary to channel the growing needs of technological demand for data, but it remains to be seen that this rain of millions does not lead to a new bubble in a sector, which We already know that it is not very ecological.
Another sector that is changing at high speed is the automobile industry. We are not just referring to the progressive change, too slow, from combustion cars to electric vehicles, where Europe does not quite find its place in a cocktail that mixes Falling sales, doubts about tariffs on Chinese electric cars and layoffs in sight. The transformation is much deeper. Among other things because it seems that buying a car has stopped being a priority and increasingly There are more drivers who opt for other types of alternatives to purchasing: renting, hourly rental or subscription. In this way, it is not strange that there are automobile companies that find themselves involved in a perfect storm: Volkswagen, Mercedes and Stellantis, the owner of Opel, Peugeot and Fiat, stop their businesses cold.
The data
was the increase in food prices in September, according to the INE. With this drop of seven tenths in year-on-year food inflationStatistics has confirmed that the general CPI fell at 1.5% last month. It seems that the price pressure is not so strong anymore. Even the large consumer companies predict a drop in food prices in the coming months, however, they do so with crocodile tears: complaining that “the legislative environment is unbearable”, that The reduction in working hours “will destroy competitiveness” or what “they have been blamed in recent years” for high pricesalthough at the same time they have admitted that “food inflation at normal levels is 1.2%.” We must remember that in March 2023, for example, food prices increased by 16.6%, that olive oil is still 60% more expensive or how it has affected the changes in shopping cart consumption habitsLet’s see if now the blame is going to lie with the citizens.
The graph
still queue the demonstration that we experienced in Madrid to claim that “housing is not a business”where thousands of people participated with a clear role of the housing groups that move against “the rentier system”. There is fatigue with a situation that worsens month by month and that forces more than a million families to make an excessive effort to meet the cost of a roof, but there are also proposals for solutions: rent control, ban on evictions and stopping vulture funds. As you can see in the graph, housing intermediaries have increased their profit by 53% despite the fact that they have only increased employment by 2%, proof that brick is another financial asset. It is clear that the problem is serious. Even The Bank of Spain supports the increase in the public rental housing stock in the face of “the current rigidity of supply”. The coalition government approved two days after the protest a game of 200 million for the young rental bonus. This is a controversial measure, since experts point out that direct rental aid has an inflationary effectbut they doubt the impact of this measure with a scarce provision, plus the difficulties in processing and which only reaches 0.6% of young people.
Every time he speaks the bread rises
The classification of the ERTE as unjustified is a necessary declaration of the transaction reached with the unions in the collective conflict. It does not mean that the difficult decision to apply an ERTE was taken lightly, far from it.
Samu Foundation Spokesperson
The SAMU Foundation is dedicated to bidding for contracts public reception services for migrant minorsdisability and other social services in Andalusia, the Community of Madrid or the Canary Islands. It seems to be an exemplary entity but even in organizations that are dedicated to good causes you can find despicable actions. The SAMU Foundation recognized in the National Court the application of a fraudulent temporary employment regulation file (ERTE) to some 300 workers to avoid going to trial, following the lawsuit for collective conflict presented by CCOO, UGT and CGT. The Labor Inspection had already confirmed the irregularity of the procedure. Here you can read how a foundation with a multitude of public contracts withdraws a fraudulent ERTE from 300 employees to avoid going to trial.
Entrepreneur
This week we have a couple of top-notch entrepreneurs. We have José Elías, who is emerging as the savior of the construction company OHLA, although he is from humble origins, he sells lunches for 3,000 euros where he gives investment advice and boasts of success on networks and television. Among its companies are the energy company Audax or the frozen food company La Sirena. He does not stop handing out slogans for entrepreneurs, although he has not hesitated to deceive to gain clients. Here we tell you who José Elías is, the ‘influencer’ on the Forbes list who goes to the limit.
Another ‘entrepreneur’, although quite different, is Alfredo Pulgar, head of IT at the Tax Agency in Castilla y León until 2016. Pulgar violated the regulations on incompatibilities with an aggregates company in Palencia with which he ended up convicted of fraud. In the newspaper archive you can still find a news February 2011 about Pulgar’s participation in a conference on the Internet as an “ally of companies to comply with their tax obligations.” In 2018, his own house would end up imposing a penalty of 19,669.6 euros for personal income tax from 2012 to 2014. The liquidation was confirmed in January 2023 by the Contentious Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Valladolid. A crack. In this link you have more information about the suspension of a former head of the Tax Agency convicted of fraud and sanctioned for defrauding.
Public Good
How is it possible that at this point the actions of pedophiles on social networks cannot be limited? TikTok knew that 15-year-old girls were stripping naked live in front of adults for money. The information has come to light following a leak of internal documentation of the social network created in China to which NPR has had accessAmerican public radio. The documents confirm that TikTok management discovered that a “significant” number of adults were taking advantage of the platform to send direct messages to minors to get them to undress live. TikTok’s internal analysis revealed that in a single month, one million “gifts” were sent to minors through the application’s virtual currency that were intended for these types of “transactions.” It is not the only social network where this type of abuse occurs: Arturo Béjar, former Meta engineer, revealed in an interview with elDiario.es that the corporation’s executives were aware of the lack of protection for minors: “A third of teenagers on Instagram have received sexual harassment in the last month”. In addition, TikTok’s own report noted that the social network was aware that its numerous features designed to keep young people on the application “generated a constant and irresistible need to continue opening the application.” The horror. In this report by Carlos del Castillo we tell you how TikTok knew that 15-year-old girls were stripping naked live in front of adults for money.
We like competition
In this section we bring you a series of articles from other media that we found interesting:
We finish here. This newsletter will return with more economic information next Thursday. Until then, if you have any ideas or proposals you can write to us at [email protected].
Good week!
#bubble
